Dell/EMC storage and IBM i – what’s happening

EMC was/is the biggest IBM competitor in terms of external storage arrays compatible with IBM i OS. Few years ago – EMC was acquired by Dell, but still the company delivers storage compatible natively with IBM i. This connection was possible thru D910 driver embedded into IBM i OS. Different method how IBM storage arrays talk to IBM i OS but still good enough to use NPIV protocol and get decent performance from an external storage array.

Unfortunately, recently some gossips regarding glitch between IBM and DELL became reality. IBM quietly released a statement where the future compatibility does not sound promising. “Dell has elected not to renew a licensing agreement to attach Dell storage to the IBM i
platform, IBM i clients should call Dell for all issues involving Dell storage, D910 driver will not be enhanced, and a special key will be provided to allow attachment DELL storage to connect with IBM i 7.6. “

Also there is another statement where IBM says “IBM i clients purchasing Dell storage for the first time after November 1, 2024
that requires the IBM i D910 device driver for attachment will not be entitled to the storage attachment key“.

Which my understanding is – If you want buy Dell storage and connect to IBM i today, you will not connect to any version above 7.5.

This is extremely unhealthy situation for all customers using IBM i and Dell storage devices.

a) There is no alternative to IBM storage on the market (virtualization thru SVC or vSCSI is not a solution)

b) The rules of the game changed after the cards have been dealt. Yep, the existing customer probably can continue to use the existing devices for next 3-4 years but that’s it. While, IBM declared that D910 device driver will not be enhanced, this is more or less a death sentence.

From some internal documents which I’ve seen, Dell provided instructions to sales personnel how to communicate but obviously I can’t publish it here. I encourage all existing Dell customers approach their representative and ask for details.

Dell also provided FAQ for existing IBMi customer, where Dell tries to say that everything is under control, read here, but ….Each new OS release comes with some performance enhancements, more q depth supported, better usage of simultaneous IO transfer. If IBM declared no updates for the existing driver, we can easily imagine a scenario when the existing version remain to work but won’t be so efficient as other supported devices.